More than 50 policemen were feared drowned in a reservoir in India's eastern Orissa state on Sunday after the boat ferrying them came under heavy gunfire from Maoist guerrillas, police and news reports said, according to dpa. Orissa police chief Gopal Nanda said the incident took place in a remote area in the southern Malkangiri district when 64 security personnel of the Greyhound Force were headed for a joint operation against the Maoists, the PTI news agency reported. Only eight could manage to swim to safety and many of them sustained bullet wounds. "We cannot specify the exact number of policemen missing right now," Nanda told the PTI, adding that a search operation was launched to rescue policemen in the area located some 500 kilometres south-west of the state capital Bhubaneshwar. But there were varying figures of policemen feared drowned in the 40 metre-deep reservoir.
